Katherine Sangster: Politics wasn’t something I felt I had a natural ability for

The Labour MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East on how childcare costs ignited an interest in politics, as told to Louise Wilson

I got into politics because I started to campaign on childcare. As a working parent, when I tried to return to work, I realised that it was actually extremely difficult. I could manage it, I could get my kids into nursery and I could cover the costs, just, and still have a career. But I thought there’s plenty of women who can’t do it, and they might drop out of the workplace and never return. That’s not right for a whole variety of reasons. So, I started campaigning on that.

Politics wasn’t something I felt I had a natural ability for, but suddenly I was on TV, speaking on the radio, meeting with MSPs. And I thought, ‘oh, this is something I can do. This is something I’m interested in’.

That experience has always run through how I approach things: if you’re experiencing it, you’re the best person to talk about it. I would always say that to anyone. Don’t ever feel that politics is something that happens distantly to someone else. It happens to you. And if you’re experiencing something, you’re the expert and people should listen to you.

I have to stop myself saying that I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to have four kids and have a career. We should never use ‘lucky’ when you’ve done what you want to do in your life; it shouldn’t be down to luck. It should be down to us as policymakers putting the structures in place so that people can achieve what they want to achieve. Too many women drop out the workplace when they have children and then it’s a real struggle to get back in.

I was 40 when I first started to take an interest in politics; I’d already had a family, had a career. That probably gives me a bit of balance, not everything is the be-all and end-all, and you’re here for a purpose. You recognise you’re in it to achieve something and can try not to get just sucked into the machine of it. If you’re travelling to Edinburgh each week you can probably put your personal life aside. It’s easier to stay in a bubble when you’re away from home. But I go home to my family.

My house is my most treasured possession. That’s where my husband is, where my kids are. That’s where I like to go and chill out. The minute I get in the door, I put on my pyjamas. During the campaign I realised how much I missed being in my house. I like to potter. I’m an introvert so I get my energy from pottering and just being by myself. During the campaign, that’s what I missed. It was quite tiring.

Public speaking is never something I’ve ever been comfortable with. It’s always something I find challenging. But my guilty pleasure is screaming the lyrics to Taylor Swift loudly in my car. I saw her when she came to Edinburgh, and I took my girls. It was their first concert and it was amazing.

I put quite a lot of pressure on myself. I think that’s a good thing. If I was sitting here as an MSP thinking I’m really good at everything and there’s nothing left to achieve, that’s wrong. You want people in here who constantly want to improve themselves or constantly want to be working for other people. Other people would say that I’m quite hard on myself.

The election story in Scotland isn’t particularly different from the story in England and Wales, in the sense that we are fighting on two fronts. We’ve lost progressive voters to the Greens and Lib Dems, and we’re losing socially conservative, older voters to Reform. That’s really difficult.

One of the answers is we have to fix the damage that Brexit did, we have to grow the economy, and we have to put more money in people’s pockets. People are fed up; we have to prove to them that we can deliver. That’s not easy. But being in government isn’t easy. That’s the other thing, you know, we always knew we’d go into this election with a UK Labour Government that’s had to make unpopular decisions. That is the nature of running the country.

We’re still taking a breath and trying to work out what went wrong with Labour’s campaign. I’m here with a level of humility, in the sense that I didn’t win my constituency. I’m here to build bridges and I’m here to build consensus. And I’m here to deliver, because I think that’s what the public was telling us, I think that’s what they were saying.

The SNP didn’t win a majority and Reform didn’t do as well as they claimed they were going to, but the Lib Dems did better and the Greens did better – parties that worked in a more collaborative space seemed to do better. I think that’s the message that we should take away from public. That’s certainly what I’m here to do.

A lot of people came to the door very angry, and quite confused, articulating issues about Iran, Trump, Keir Starmer. It was really difficult to say, ‘I get that that’s all really challenging and really difficult, but I’m Katherine, I live here, here’s the issues that I want to fix’. To a certain extent, it was successful because some people did put the X beside my name, but ultimately you can’t door-knock your way out of a national picture.

I thought we ran an excellent campaign, a really energetic campaign. We spoke to about 10,000 people. We responded to what they told us, especially locally when they were talking about their high street and anti-social behaviour and potholes, getting a GP appointment. This was all stuff that we responded to. But ultimately, we couldn’t get over that national picture.

People still look to Westminster and are not as focused on what’s happening here. We just couldn’t break through that. And there is still a core group of voters who will vote on their constitutional position – it’s not the only driver, but it almost feels like it’s an exam question before anyone will listen to you.